


Superlative

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 12:00:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15751257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: It is a very poor time to be having such a bad day, but Roy supposes that's par for the course. Somehow he manages to be lucky anyway.





	Superlative

**Author's Note:**

> Huge shout-out and special thanks to the [anon on Tumblr](http://tierfal.tumblr.com/post/172458121739/i-have-had-a-bunch-of-people-send-me-songs-that) who put this song on my radar. You know who you are, even if I don't. XD
> 
> My strategy ("""strategy""") with [Roy/Ed Week](http://royedweek.tumblr.com/) this year was to dash stuff off as I thought of ideas and then cram it into one of the existing prompts after the fact, because I'm a hack. :') So this one is for _celebration/stillness_ , which actually worked out all right, because it's got a bit of both. ♥
> 
> …oh, and it's a hand-wavey AU where Ed's still got automail and alchemy and may well be under someone else's command at this point, because that's my Thing lately. ^^;;  
> 
> 
> * * *
> 
> _There's something about the way that you_  
>  _Always see the pretty view_  
>  _Overlook the mud and mess_  
>  _Always lookin' effortless_  
>  _And still you_  
>  _Still you want me_
> 
> _I got no innocence_  
>  _Faith ain't no privilege_  
>  _I am a deck of cards_  
>  _Vice or a game of hearts_  
>  _And still you_  
>  _Still you want me_
> 
> _I'll always let you down_  
>  _You're shattered on the ground_  
>  _Still I find you there_  
>  _Next to me_
> 
> _And oh_  
>  _The stupid things I do_  
>  _I'm far from good, it's true_  
>  _Still I find you_  
>  _Next to me_
> 
> – "Next to Me" – Imagine Dragons –
> 
> * * *

Roy would really like to move.

He makes an effort, but his muscles just sort of twitch in a rather feeble sort of way.  Nothing noticeably budges.  What a shame.

Ed’s keys turn in the lock, and the door opens with the same faint telltale creak it always does.  In the silence-but-for-shuffling, Roy can almost hear Ed’s thoughts—the assessment of Roy’s boots toppled next to the shoe rack, set against the fact that it’s only six; a glance at the wooden wall hooks and the coat rack by the door to confirm that he hasn’t even taken off his jacket.  Tonight’s files were set down on the aforementioned shoe rack where his boots should be; there’s no fire in the hearth and no sounds from the kitchen.  Ed will put it together.  Ed’s a genius.  He always does.

Roy really meant to make it to the couch.  It would also have been nice if he’d had it in him to turn a light on.  The general buzzing sting of failure aside, it elongates the suffering by a few more seconds: Ed has to pause in the doorway to let his eyes adjust for a moment, and then he takes a few cautious steps forward and switches on the lamp.

The room lights up gold, but it had been doing that since Ed entered anyway.

“Hello, beautiful,” Roy says.

“Hello yourself,” Ed says.  He comes over to where Roy’s lying on the carpet, right arm folded across his chest so that he can clutch the medals in his hand.  Ed crouches down beside him.  “I’m sorry.”

Roy manages to look at him—to meet his eyes, even now, from the bottom of this.  “What in God’s name are _you_ sorry for?”

“That it’s like this,” Ed says.  “All of it.  The world.  The job.  The things you have to do.  That today was.  That there’s not a whole lot either of us can do about it.”  He reaches down with both hands and gently starts prying Roy’s fingers from around the circular symbols that landed him here—brassy-bright like false suns, and all they bring is more death, more dread, more burning.  “But you gotta remember one thing for me, okay?”

The automail clinks against the metal, and then it’s cool on Roy’s palm as Ed clasps Roy’s hand between both of his.

“We’re stubborn as all hell separately,” Ed says.  “I don’t think they’ve even got an order of magnitude big enough to measure how stubborn we can be put together.”

“Is stubbornness best gauged with distance?” Roy asks.  “Or does it have volume?”

“Has auditory volume an awful lot,” Ed says, almost-smiling.  He sits down, half-sighs, stretches his legs out, and wraps just his left hand around Roy’s instead.  “I think I picture it having surface area, but I’m not sure about mass.”

“It may also have a temperature,” Roy says.  “I think I imagine stubbornness being warm.”

“Probably expands with heat, too,” Ed says.

They look at each other for a moment.

Roy tries very hard to smile.

“Happy anniversary,” he says.

Ed squeezes his hand.  “It still is.  So shut up.”

“I hadn’t even said anything self-deprecating yet,” Roy says.

Ed raises an eyebrow.  “You think I don’t know you well enough by now to recognize the signs?  Helps that you usually put them in neon with a little border of those flashing marquee lights.”

“If I am going to be miserable,” Roy says, “I intend to do it with as much panache as possible.”

That coaxes a tiny smile out of Ed again.  “Yeah, I noticed that.”

“Your keen observational skills are one of your most attractive qualities,” Roy says.

Ed releases his hand—but only to free up both for planting on the carpet, the better to ease himself down right next to Roy.  “That’s a nice change from ‘How could you possibly not see the difference?  This one’s _off_ -white’.”

Roy blinks at the ceiling.  With his hair spilt across the floor like this, Ed tends to be too gorgeous to look at directly, and just now Roy’s not sure he can bear it.  “When did I say that?”

“Yesterday morning,” Ed says.  “It was the towels.”

“I can’t believe there’s a man on this planet stupid enough to give you grief over bath towels,” Roy says.

Ed hooks his metal arm through Roy’s.  “There it is.  Good old Roy Mustang brand self-deprecating bullshit.”

“I held it off as long as I could stand,” Roy says.

Ed reaches across to pat his arm with the other hand.  “I know.  It’s hard.  It really is.”

Roy lies still for a moment longer, just… breathing.  The medals must not be so heavy; it must be a psychosomatic hyper-awareness that his traitor brain has saddled him with.  The firm, sharp lines of Ed’s automail against his arm help to ground him.  It’s all a bit less terrible with the lights on.

“I got you something,” he says.

“Huh?” Ed says.

“For our anniversary,” Roy says.  “I got you something.”

Ed makes a pained noise.  “I thought we agreed we weren’t gonna do that, since we were both gonna have crap weeks, and it’s all silly romantic tosh anyway, and nobody ever wants to finish the chocolates.”

“You always finish the chocolates,” Roy says.  “Usually at one in the morning.  Unless I pry them out of your grasp.”

“Okay,” Ed says.  “ _You_ never want to finish the chocolates, and you never want me to finish them either, so nobody ever finishes them except in secret in the dark of night.”

“That’s about right,” Roy says.  “But I didn’t get you chocolates.”

“You weren’t supposed to get me anything,” Ed says.

“I know,” Roy says.  He reaches over without looking, sweeping his arm back and forth beneath the couch.  “I couldn’t help myself.”

“Damn it,” Ed says.  “Now I have to get you something.”

“No,” Roy says, “you don’t.”

A fingertip grazes the corner of the box, and then he manages to catch the rest of it and draw it towards himself.  Hiking it up enough to slide it over his chest to where Ed can reach it is a bit more of a trial, but eventually he succeeds.  At least that marks one victory today.

“I meant to wrap it,” he says.  “I’m s—”

“Don’t you dare,” Ed says.  “Can I shake it?”

“Gently,” Roy says.  “If you must.”

Evidently it’s a requirement, but the slight knocking noises don’t give much away.

“Did you just put a smaller box inside of this box?” Ed asks.

Roy has to look at him now.  “ _No_.”

Ed grins, and that…

_That_ is an anniversary gift.  Roy’s, in comparison, is the work of an amateur wanting very badly to do right.

“Okay, okay,” Ed says.  He tussles with the lid for a second, and then it gives, and then he lifts out the tangle of intricate aged bronze within.

He holds it in both hands for a moment, turning it over, until Roy says, “Twist it.”

He could watch Ed, in the throes of focus like this, for the rest of his life and never regret an instant.  “Like—this, or—?”

As he hits the hinges just right, it unfolds in his hands like an elegant mechanical flower opening to the light.  That was the moment, toying with it in the store, that Roy knew he wasn’t walking away without it.

“Oh, _damn_ , that is cool,” Ed says.  “Winry’d kill me in cold blood for th—oh.  You— _Roy_.”

As a canny politician, Roy will not admit, even under duress, that he would do such a thing as _bribe_ Pinako Rockbell for photographs.  With the right leverage, he might confess to having considered paying an excellent portrait photographer to make a house call at the Rockbell-Elrics… but no one can prove any of it.

Except if they see this photo frame contraption on Ed’s desk, of course, but that’s a risk he’s willing to take.

“You _asshole_ ,” Ed says.  He strokes his softer thumb over the little panes of glass.  The candid that Pinako sent of him with both arms flung around Al’s shoulders, shortly after the Promised Day, when Al was still scrawny and Ed was still shaken, is so charming that Roy honestly couldn’t stop himself from doing the same when it arrived.

He wasn’t sure that the image, dug up from some distant corner of an attic, of Ed’s parents’ wedding day would go over quite as well—but Ed’s staring at it, and the furrowing of his forehead is a faint one.  The photo of Al, Winry, and their tiny towheaded twins in the opposite position in the frame holds his eyes for just as long, however, and is much less controversial.  Roy hopes they’ll rather literally balance out.

“Idiot,” Ed says, ever so slightly shakily, after a survey of the photo of the last late-summer party in Rebecca’s backyard, and then the nearly-silhouetted sunset shot of Pinako smoking on the porch with Den’s head resting on her knee.  The one of Gracia and Elysia making a heart shape with their hands keeps his attention for a lengthy moment, too.

“Only ‘idiot’?” Roy asks.  “I was hoping I could aspire to the greatest heights of idiocy ever tested.  I wanted to be the _superlative_ idiot.  I’m hurt.”

“You’re gonna be in a second when I break your nose,” Ed says, with absolutely no trace of anything like violence.  He turns just enough to levy a glare.  “You didn’t put in one of you.”

“Ah,” Roy says.  “Yes.  Well.  Felt a bit too vain even for—”

“ _Idiot_ ,” Ed says.  “How am I supposed to procrastinate staring at this thing instead of at my work all day long if it doesn’t have your smug face right in the middle?”

“Terribly sorry,” Roy says.  “What an unconscionable oversight.”

“You’re damn right it was,” Ed says.  His eyes flick up the glass, then down again.  “I think we can shift stuff around and make space, though.  I want a _real_ smug one, you hear me?”

“I’ll do my very best,” Roy says.

Ed sets the frame, very gently, down on the carpet, and then he rolls onto his side and lays his arm across Roy.  It’s not a hug, exactly, given that the floor is in the way of any encirclement, but considering the circumstances, it’s remarkably close.

“Doesn’t have to be,” Ed says.  “Your best, I mean.  Not all the time.  Just has to be you.”

Roy’s arms are so damn heavy, but for this, he can raise them—enough to hold on.

“That,” he says, “you have.  Always, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Good,” Ed says.  Roy can hear the smile—like a crack of sunlight eking through a dingy windowpane.  A warm streak.  A sliver of the dawn.  “Happy anniversary, superlative idiot.”

“See?” Roy says.  “How hard was that?”

Ed snorts, and the wedge of light is widening, and Roy can feel himself starting to smile back.


End file.
